Ernest de GENGENBACH (1903-1979). 2 L.A.S., La Tourette-Caba - Lot 192

Lot n° 192
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Ernest de GENGENBACH (1903-1979). 2 L.A.S., La Tourette-Caba - Lot 192
Ernest de GENGENBACH (1903-1979). 2 L.A.S., La Tourette-Cabardès (Aude) 1956-1957, to a lady; 5 pages in-4 (visiting card enclosed). On the restoration of the village of Cabardès in Occitania, and the reception of Hungarian refugees after the Budapest uprising. 29 December 1956. "The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, knowing that I am in charge of the reconstruction and repopulation of an abandoned village, is considering with the National Committee for the Reception of Hungarian Refugees the possible accommodation of these unfortunate people in my region... There is a shortage of masons, carpenters, plasterers [...]. I remind you that you promised me your help"... The Hungarians are right "to reproach the Westerners for having allowed them to be massacred. It will be the shame of European Christianity and of the Machiavellian American democracy to have allowed all this to happen. He deplored the lack of commitment of French intellectuals, and found saddening the admission of impotence of Jean Cocteau, Honorary President of the France-Hungary Committee, "who sponsored my admission to the Société des Gens de Lettres and who is a friend". The Figaro Littéraire did not dare to publish his appeal, to spare Sartre and Breton: "Always this cowardly opportunism of the right, literary as well as political"... February 20, 1957. He recalls that she promised her help for the restoration of this beautiful village of the Black Mountain; Cocteau accepted the honorary presidency of the Association of the Friends of Cabardès, "writing to me 'If we cannot save the men, let us at least save the landscapes'". But he needed funds... A rich merchant bought the beautiful houses of the village for a pittance: "he realized the dream that I had been begging you since June 1956 to help me realize". Gengenbach left Paris in 1953 "to bury myself here". His wife, an artist, followed him and gave up her social life to "save something of France's aesthetic heritage [...]. I am completely discouraged by the indifference of private individuals as well as by the criminal inaction of the Public Authorities who let the most beautiful villages of France collapse, one after the other"...
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